What is recorded here

Ten hearths still warm the sand at Spanish Point, surrounded by blackish rock flakes and heaps of limpet shells. Knowles walked this stretch in 1899, finding cow, pig and deer bones alongside a large anvil stone but no pottery. The precise midden has vanished beneath the shifting beach, leaving only the memory of domestic heat and the quiet certainty that people lived there long before the hotel arrived.

Listed as 'Potential site - documentation' in the SMR (1992). Knowles (1900, 352) described a visit to Spanish Point in 1899 where middens were found as follows: ‘The first place visited was Spanish Point, where remains of a rather extensive settlement were found in a stretch of sand hills close to the Atlantic Hotel [site of present Armada Hotel at the N end of the beach]. About ten hearths were found, and round about them numerous rough cores and flakes of blackish rock, which Professor Cole has kindly examined and determined to be a fine-grained, muddy sandstone, probably of Silurian age. Shells of limpet and periwinkle were also lying about in heaps, and close to one of the hearths my eldest daughter found a large anvil stone and a hammerstone, also a large chopper, showing marks of use on its edge. Several flakes were brought away, and also some teeth and bones. These latter were found to be cow, pig, and red deer. No flint or pottery was found.’ The precise location of these middens is unknown. Compiled by: Mary Tunney Date of upload: 18 November 2020

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